It looks like the void left by lack of socket LGA1150 motherboards is being filled by new LGA2011 HEDT ones, with ASUS joining in with the P9X79-E WS. The board is so big and feature-packed that its designers labeled it a workstation board that's built in the SSI-CEB form-factor (should fit in full-ATX cases that have room for EATX). The board features a 10-phase CPU VRM, seven PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, which are wired to the CPU through a couple of 48-lane PCI-Express bridge chips, support for 128 GB quad-channel DDR3 memory, six SATA 6 Gb/s ports (two from the X79 PCH, four from third-party controllers), four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, a couple of eSATA 6 Gb/s ports, four USB 3.0 ports, FireWire, 8-channel HD audio, and two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, which are each backed by Intel-made PHYs.

I would prefer cheap, desktop, 2x 1150 socket mobo's than this. I wonder why there are no such products on the market.

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Or perhaps because socket 1150 has yet to be released?

Sorry, had to say it. Socket 1155 doesn't even have the hardware to link multiple CPUs on one board (only 2011 has that ability currently). If the hardware doesn't support it, you're not likely to see it in consumer level boards.

When you've got as many third-party chips as these high end X79 boards do, you either have a massive heatsink (which I presume is what you're referring to) or an annoying little fan like the Asrock X79 Extreme11.

An i7 isn't going to be able to run more than one CPU in a dual-CPU motherboard, it doesn't have the QPI links for the second CPU. You need a particular Xeon for that and those chips get really pricey really quick.

Sometimes you just need to indulge and go with something nice. I'd rather have the beefier VRMs though. There are a lot of really nice things on this board though. For example all of the fan headers are 4-pin PWM, and there are something like 6 of them.

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how one looks at it, I'm kinda low on the upgrade stack at the moment. Kid #2 is older now, going to get the wife's old computer and she'll get a new one. I'll be getting a new GPU/monitor so that my current ones trickle down.

I won't be getting new core hardware until... oh, look at that... when the Ivy Bridge-E chips are slated to be released

Unless you clock your CPU at something like 5,2GHz+ you won't see any difference between 10 or 20 phases, that's seriously overkill.

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Depends on what you consider overkill. More VRM phases means each VRM is doing less work so less heat is being generated per VRM. Also when Cadaveca reviewed the board he found that the Deluxe had measured only 1-watt usage on the VRMs when the machine was idle. So it's not just about overclocking. It's about stability, power loss, and efficiency along with how much power it can supply along with the quality of that power. I've seen my 3820 eat 250-watts of power and every time I overclock it that much I'm glad I have 20 phases of CPU VRM goodness to ensure the quality of that power being delivered. I have had no vdroop issues with this board at all and LLC had been extremely flexible.

Depends on what you consider overkill. More VRM phases means each VRM is doing less work so less heat is being generated per VRM. Also when Cadaveca reviewed the board he found that the Deluxe had measured only 1-watt usage on the VRMs when the machine was idle. So it's not just about overclocking. It's about stability, power loss, and efficiency along with how much power it can supply along with the quality of that power. I've seen my 3820 eat 250-watts of power and every time I overclock it that much I'm glad I have 20 phases of CPU VRM goodness to ensure the quality of that power being delivered. I have had no vdroop issues with this board at all and LLC had been extremely flexible.

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I run a 3930K 24/7 @ 4,8 GHz 1.36v and I can easily increase the overclock to 5,2-5,3 GHz with 1.55v without any kind of voltage fluctuation.

This all on a Rampage IV Extreme, I think it has even less than 20 phases, what matters is the quality of the phases IMHO.

Forget about it on any other brand boards, they are just the same as the P9X79 Deluxe. What ASRock really does different I am not sure, but what I can say is that to my eyes, ASRock does have a far beefier VRM, on the Extreme11, 1000% for sure it's got the best VRM out of all boards I have tried.

ASUS neglected to send me ROG X79 boards, so I have no idea how well they work.

So, I hope that the same is not an issue on this WS board, but since it IS a WorkStation product, I do not really expect CPU clocking to be a top priority, and stability will be the key point.

I've noticed this. After seeing the Extreme11 though, it makes me wish that I waited a little longer. Not to say that I'm not happy with the P9X79 Deluxe, but that embedded LSI controller on the Extreme11 is pretty awesome. I would have liked to have seen RAID 5 and 6 support though which is practically a deal breaker for the price of the board.